Radeon HD 5550 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7950 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 5550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be much (more or less 918%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80800 (918%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit (more or less 482%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5550, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.